Menso Alting, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetMenso Alting
Preacher and reformer
Date of Birth: 09-Nov-1541
Place of Birth: Eelde, Drenthe, Netherlands
Date of Death: 07-Oct-1612
Profession: theologian
Nationality: Netherlands
Zodiac Sign: Scorpio 
About Menso Alting
- Menso Alting (Eelde, 9 November 1541 – Emden, 7 October 1612) was a Dutch Reformed preacher and reformer. Menso Alting was born in Eelde and was raised in a Catholic family.
- After visiting several schools in the Netherlands and Germany, he studied theology at Cologne.
- In 1564 he was named vicar to Haren.
- A few months later he was named pastor of Sleen.
- Menso Alting probably never visited Sleen and Haren, instead using the functions, which had been given thanks to influential family-members, as a source of income. In 1565, during his study Menso joined the Protestant Reformation.
- He continued his studies in Heidelberg.
- After finished his studies Menso Alting travelled back to Helpen, now a district of Groningen and Sleen, this time to convert the inhabitants to Calvinism. As a result of the Protestant persecutions in the Netherlands after the Beeldenstorm, Menso Alting fled to Germany in July 1567.
- Travelling through Leiselheim (at Worms), Dirmstein (at Frankenthal) and Heidelberg he eventually reached Emden in East-Frisia in 1575.
- Around this time about half of the city's inhabitants were Protestant refugees from the Netherlands; an estimated 6000 Dutch people went to Emden during the second half of the 16th century. In October 1575 he became preacher of the Great church in Emden, as well as a political leader.
- He succeeded the Dutch reformer Albertus Risaeus, who had died in 1574.
- Alting caused a breakthrough for Calvinism in Emden.
- Shortly after he became preacher, countess Anna von Oldenburg died.
- Menso Alting led the Calvinistic funeral services. Count William Louis, stadtholder of Friesland, invited Menso Alting to Drenthe in 1594 to preach there.
- From this period Menso Alting received his nickname the reformer of Drenthe.
- It is known that he used a hunebed as pulpit for his sermons.
- This hunebed is still locally known as the Popeless church. In March 1595, Menso Alting played a large role in the rebellion of the Calvinistic inhabitants of Emden against the Lutheran count of East-Frisia, Edzard II.
- Menso, who hoped that Emden would join the Dutch Republic, roused the population.
- Not long after the city declared itself independent from East-Frisia.
- In the treaty of Delfzijl on 15 July 1595, Emden received a semi-autonomous status, which it would keep until 1744. Menso Alting died at the age of seventy in Emden.
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